Traveling during Hurricane Season

There was an interesting article in the Newark Star Ledger on Sunday 7/15/07 by Fritz Faerber of the Associated Press.

He and his wife were in Playa del Carmen during Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. I remember that time well since I had a couple scheduled to get married in the Riviera Maya that week and were at a resort there with 12 other family members and lived through the hurricane. Lots of gray hair popped up that week!

Needless to say, the author brings up some interesting points about traveling during the hurricane season. I have taken excerpts from the article for your benefit. This can also equate to any type of emergency, both weather related or not.

1. Buy travel insurance to cover emergency expenses such as extra days in the hotel and airline fees.

2. Don't book online. The Faerbers booked though an online travel booking service. When they called the online travel company for help, they were told to call the airline. When they called the airline, they were told to call the booking agency. Mr. Faerber mentioned that the tourists who were evacuated first booked their vacations as packages through big companies.
I do remember those days well. Some tour operators flew chartered planes in to evacuate their clients, if the clients had booked charter air through them as part of their vacation packages.

3. Before leaving home, find 1 person who will be able to serve as your point of contact for information and updates. This way, you only need to make 1 phone call or send 1 email to alert everyone of your whereabouts and status. This point of contact can also pass along updates to your boss, dog sitter and everyone else who needs to know.
I particularly like this suggestion. During the 5 days it took for me to get everyone home, I was getting a zillion calls from all the family members. Had there been 1 point of contact, I could have spent more time working on getting my clients home, rather than explaining the same thing to all family members.

4. Maintain your prospective about what is going on. You can't control the weather and some things are just out of your control. Remember that the people helping you through any hurricane or disaster are living through it themselves. Their families, homes and livelihoods are in danger as well so please remember to thank them for all that they are helping you with.

I would also like to add a couple of my own suggestions:
1. Take extra medication with you. If you are delayed in coming home due to any reason, including storms, airline delays, etc, at least you won't get sick while you are waiting to return home.
2. Take a color copy of your passport with you, just in case your original is lost during the turmoil. Also, leave a copy with your designated contact.
3. Ask me about which travel suppliers offer trip insurance that allows you to cancel for any reason. If a major storm is anticipated, you may want to just cancel the vacation in advance.
4. Please bring your insurance information with you in case you need to call the insurance company for anything.
5. Please give my phone # to your designated contact so that they can reach me to let me know what your status is and what help you need from me.
6. Always take a credit card with you, just in case. Debit cards are great but if you have to pay for extra nights in a hotel, food, etc, you might end up exceeding the amount available in your debit card.
7. Please alert your credit/debit card company that you will be traveling out to of the country so that they don't deny charges from overseas.


Try not to worry about what can go wrong with a vacation and focus on the fact that you ARE going on a vacation. We can work through any issues if any arise.